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This budget is a cynical attempt to buy votes instead of planning for the nation’s looming challenges. What we needed was a plan to tackle the climate emergency through a real investment in renewables and a managed transition away from coal and other fossil fuels. What we needed was a plan to tackle growing inequality and to fund our essential services. Instead Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg have stuck their heads in the sand and delivered a few election bribes.

“Rarely do budgets give us such stark choices about what kind of future we want for our country, but this one surely does. We have a clear choice between the Liberals’ selfish, dog-eat-dog worldview or a more caring society where we look after each other,” Dr Richard Di Natale said.

“Under the Government’s radical US-style tax plan, a hedge fund manager on $200,000 gets 10 times the tax cut as the person who trims the hedges around his mansion.

“We have a progressive tax system in Australia but now we have a fight ahead of us to keep it.

The Turnbull Government's end-of-year mini budget is mean-spirited, wringing savings out of young people, struggling families and newly arrived migrants in order to keep funding tax cuts to their wealthy mates from the big end of town.

“The Turnbull Government has got just that little bit meaner with today’s budget, which unfairly targets young people, struggling families and newly arrived migrants with $6 billion in cuts,” said leader of the Australian Greens Dr Richard Di Natale.

“If you’re under the age of 35, you’ve been screwed over in this budget - whether it’s the gouging of higher education, the lack of action on climate change or the refusal to tackle housing affordability,” Leader of the Australian Greens Dr Richard Di Natale said.

“It’s clear that the Government finally understands you can’t just keep cutting spending without raising revenue. But this is a budget with no vision or direction for the country. It isn’t a roadmap for the future, it’s a highway to nowhere,” Dr Di Natale said.

Greens Treasury spokesperson, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, says that the quarterly economic figures show that the Government needs to urgently walk away from its austerity drive and to ‘borrow to build’ for productive public infrastructure.

Senator Whish-Wilson, “Scott Morrison’s policy prescription is delivering nothing but bad medicine for the Australian economy.

“The Government’s austerity measures are hurting poorer people and they are actually now harming the wider economy.

In response to reports today the government will cut company and income taxes in the upcoming Budget, Greens Treasury spokesperson Adam Bandt MP called on Labor to rule out cutting taxes in the upcoming Budget and election.

"Now is not the time for tax cuts. We are facing a revenue crisis in this country. Our schools, hospitals and infrastructure are under pressure and in desperate need of investment," Mr Bandt said.

"The Greens will not support tax cuts in the upcoming Budget or the election."

The Australian Greens say Prime Minister Turnbull has now put public school funding in the too-hard-basket, along with health

"Instead of having the courage to raise the revenue we need to pay for quality schools and hospitals, the Liberals are handing all their responsibilities over to the states," said Greens Leader Richard Di Natale.

"The suggestion that the federal government may not provide any funding for public schools is an extraordinary abandonment of one of the government's key responsibilities.

Australian Greens Senator Rachel Siewert said the Abbott government is deliberately trying to smear all income support recipients with this latest ‘tough cop on the beat' approach to welfare.

"Appointing a senior police officer to target welfare fraud implies that the problems with the system are all related to deliberate fraud rather than administrative errors resulting from a complex and unwieldy system that leads to the majority of overpayments or in fact underpayments," said Senator Siewert said.

An independent costing requested by the Australian Greens and prepared by the Parliamentary Budget Office shows reducing superannuation tax concessions for the most wealthy would raise $10.16 billion dollars over four years.

"Government advisers have suggested it in the tax white paper, Labor says they'll support it and the Greens have got a costed policy that's ready to go. This would remove a tax haven and reduce the wealth gap between rich and poor, which would be a really great thing for Australians," said Greens Leader Christine Milne.